Drunk and angry, Noy Khaopan killed an innocent man outside of Bangkok. After receiving an eleven-year sentence Khaopan entered a rehabilitation program inside of Thailand’s infamous Khao Prik prison aptly named, Prison Fight. The program’s premise is simple; participants train and fight each other in Muay Thai kickboxing tournaments that offer the champion a royal pardon granted from Thailand’s king. The losers return to the general population to finish their sentences.
Premiering on Showtime this Friday night, PRISON FIGHTERS: 5 Rounds to Freedom is a documentary film that follows incarcerated Thai kickboxer Noy Khaopan as he trains for the most important fight of his life. He defeated the first seven of his incarcerated opponents and now he will fight for his pardon. A win would erase his conviction and in the eyes of the government, it would be as if the murder never occurred.
PRISON FIGHTERS asks the question, “Can violent men redeem themselves through violent acts?”
Shot in Thailand, the lush green vegetation, Buddhist imagery and roadside stalls selling meticulously prepared chicken feet situate the film thousands of miles from the United States. But Thailand is in the throes of a drug epidemic that makes the social context of the film painfully familiar to an American audience. Cheap, widely available methamphetamine flooded into Thailand in the early 2000’s much like crack cocaine invaded urban America during the 1980’s and 1990’s. Similar to the United States’ response to crack, the Thai government implemented a supply-side strategy that has filled the country’s prisons well beyond capacity. Thailand’s prison population has doubled since 2006. The Prison Fight program was introduced by the Thai Department of Corrections to curb swollen prison populations and give inmates purpose, hope and a chance to fight for their freedom.
Though only five percent of the inmates released through the Prison Fight program have returned to prison, it remains controversial. Freedom is granted those who win their fights. They may be non-violent offenders who were arrested with a pocket full of meth, or they may be murderers, rapists and extortionists. Filmmakers Mark Kriegel and Micah Brown do not use their film to judge the morality or efficacy of the Prison Fight program, instead they tell the story of one fighter who wants to change his life through his fists and feet. An important part of that story is the pain, suffering and destruction Noy Khaopan’s crime brought to his family and the family of the man he murdered.
The film crew was granted extraordinary access to the Khao Prik Prison, located three hours outside of Bangkok. The familiar voice of the film’s narrator Ron Perlman, contextualizes the prison scenes shot in Khao Prik by stating, “Prison seems like a very Buddhist proposition; hardship with an opportunity for reflection and even reformation of the soul.” The Buddhist-inspired tattoos covering many of the inmates’ torsos, legs and arms and the interviews with the prison officials reveal a prison culture that is not rooted in Western conceptions of criminal justice. In the United States, it would seem ridiculous for a prison to host basketball tournaments where teams of inmates compete against each other and the champions win pardons from the president. But this film wasn’t shot in the United States and it skillfully shows that rehabilitation, redemption and the right to a second chance are not universally agreed upon concepts.
In general, I am a proponent of rehabilitation programs that offer inmates purpose, dignity and the chance to reduce their sentences. I am also interested in the religious lives of the incarcerated and I am a boxing fan. But as I watched the film, I was conflicted about who to root for in the Prison Fight matches. I asked myself how the victims’ families would feel if they bought tickets and watched these fights as spectators? Would the Prison Fight supporters feel comfortable sitting next to them?
Muay Thai is described in the film as “A violent art entwined with religious belief…that captures contradictions woven into Thai culture.” Maybe Muay Thai represents a rare example of redemptive violence, or maybe the Prison Fight program offers its champions freedom, but not redemption. The filmmakers do not answer these questions for us and their decision to embrace the contradictions between hope, suffering and justice makes PRISON FIGHTERS; 5 Rounds to Freedom a compelling documentary.